Smoking is one of the most impactful lifestyle habits that destroy your skin. Also, smoking directly impacts your skin's collagen as it decreases the amount of oxygen delivered to your body's tissue. The tissue cannot regenerate and ends up becoming damaged.
Besides time, three main things will lower your collagen levels: sunlight, smoking, and sugar. Too much exposure to ultraviolet light makes its fibers unravel. This can lead to sun damage, such as wrinkles. Many of the chemicals in cigarette smoke can damage it, which can make skin sag and wrinkle.
Ultraviolet rays, aka sunlight, cause collagen to break down faster. With sun exposure, those UV rays damage the skin by entering the dermis (the second and thickest layer of our skin) which causes collagen to break down faster.
Your body begins to lose collagen when you turn 30. The effects become noticeable after several years. Even though this is a natural process, it's possible to speed it up with UV exposure, pollution, bad habits, and poor diet choices.
Collagen levels decrease with age and, unfortunately, there's no way to prevent this. The good news is that there are several cosmetic treatments that can rebuild or restore collagen.
Eat a balanced diet that includes an adequate amount of protein. “High-protein foods contain amino acids that are critical for collagen synthesis,” says Garshick. Lean protein sources include fish, seafood, skinless chicken breast, and lean cuts of beef and pork.
The collagen tissues support the formation of bones, tendons, and cartilage that form depending on the level of mineralization. However, an individual can lose collagen components in the body due to exposure to ultraviolet light, tobacco, excessive intake of sugar, and aging.
So caffeine is a collagen killer and we should steer clear? Not exactly. "It's worth remembering that coffee doesn't destroy collagen, it inhibits its production," says nutritional therapist at the Pulse Light Clinic, Lisa Borg.
Simple Carbs
Foods like white rice, white pasta, rice cakes, white bread, popcorn, and other simple carbohydrates are quickly converted to glucose, just like sugar. This causes your blood sugar to shoot up while the glucose attacks the collagen in your skin.
Just five minutes a day of regular tapping:
encourages lymph drainage which helps eliminate the damage from free radicals; enhances our skin's ability to breathe by improving the flow of oxygen; plumps the face and smoothes wrinkles by stimulating collagen production; normalizes the activity of oil and sweat glands.
Sugar causes glycation, which is a process that breaks down collagen fibres that are important to make our skin tissues smooth and tight. Breakdown of collagen fibre causes early ageing. Excessive consumption of sugar can also cause increased production of IGF1 hormone and increased acne.
Sun exposure, pollution, and cigarette smoke are all major enemies of collagen. UV rays from the sun damage the skin's collagen fibers, causing them to break down. Pollution also damages collagen fibers and hastens the skin aging process.
The good news is, though you may not be able to bring back the lost collagen, there are ways to help get things moving and slow further loss. With the right skin care products and treatments outside and in, there's so much you can do to get back that spring back in your skin.
Collagen replacement therapy is a safe, non-surgical procedure that replenishes depleted collagen by injecting skin with highly purified bovine (cow) collagen. This collagen is so similar to human collagen that your body will readily accept it as its own.
Caffeine inhibited collagen biosynthesis in a dose-dependent manner. The mechanism of this process was found at the level of prolidase activity. Caffeine significantly inhibited the enzyme activity.
Collagen, according to dermatologist Dr. Anna Palabyab-Rufino, is the building block of protein that gives one baby skin. But due to pollution, stress, sun exposure and other toxins, the body's capacity to produce collagen starts to deplete at age 30.
Stress hormones break down the collagen and elastin in skin and interfere with rejuvenation, which can speed up the aging process causing more fine lines and wrinkles. The hair and its growth are also affected by stress by contributing to hair thinning and hair loss.
Which Fruits Have The Most Collagen? Citrus fruits like oranges, lemons, limes, and grapefruit are known for being foods high in collagen-producing properties.
It helps to stimulate the production of collagen (the most abundant protein in the body) and elastin (highly elastic protein in connective tissue that helps the skin to resume it's shape after stretching or contracting. The elastic part of the skin)